UK customs clearance typically costs between £30 and £150 per declaration, charged by your customs broker or freight agent. That fee is separate from the duty and import VAT you owe HMRC, and separate again from port and terminal charges. For a straightforward single-commodity import, most UK brokers land somewhere between £75 and £150.
That range is wide for a reason, and the reason is where most importers get caught out: the headline fee is rarely the whole bill. Below is what actually makes up the cost, what sits outside it, and the one pricing structure that turns a cheap quote into an expensive one.
What you are actually paying for
A UK import involves three separate cost sources, and only the first is your broker’s.
| Cost | Typical 2026 range | Who charges it |
|---|---|---|
| Customs declaration fee | £30–£150 per entry | Your broker or freight agent |
| Duty and import VAT | Varies by commodity code and value | HMRC |
| Port, terminal and CDS charges | ~£3.50–£70 per container | Port operator / HMRC |
| Demurrage, if collection is delayed | £50–£200 per day | Port or shipping line |
Only the first line is negotiable. Duty and VAT are set by your commodity code, customs value and country of origin — no broker can reduce them, though a good one will make sure you are not overpaying through a wrong classification or a missed preference claim.
The CDS entry charge itself is small — in the region of £2.75 per declaration in 2026. Anyone presenting that as a significant cost driver is padding.
The per-line trap
This is the single most important thing to understand before comparing quotes.
Some brokers quote per declaration. Others quote per commodity line within that declaration. A declaration can contain one commodity line or fifty.
The arithmetic is unforgiving:
- A £50 per declaration quote on a 5-line entry costs £50
- A £50 per commodity line quote on the same entry costs £250
The second broker looked cheaper. They were five times more expensive.
Ask this question of every quote you receive: “Is that per declaration or per commodity line, and how many lines are included before extra charges start?”
If a broker cannot answer that in one sentence, you have learned something useful about how the rest of the relationship will go.
What makes a declaration more expensive
Beyond the per-line question, price moves with genuine complexity:
Number of commodity lines. A pallet of one product is one line. A mixed consignment of forty SKUs across twelve tariff headings is forty lines of data entry, each needing its own commodity code, value apportionment and origin status.
Special procedures. Inward Processing, Outward Processing, customs warehousing and temporary admission all require additional authorisations, additional data elements, and — crucially — ongoing record-keeping such as a Bill of Discharge. These reasonably cost more than a standard free-circulation entry.
Controlled or licensable goods. Anything needing an import licence, a CITES permit, or clearance against a trade defence measure carries extra checks.
Preferential origin claims. Claiming zero duty under a trade agreement means holding valid proof of origin and declaring it correctly. It saves money, but it is work.
Out-of-hours or urgent clearance. Same-day and weekend clearance attracts a premium almost everywhere.
Movements requiring a GMR. RoRo freight through most UK ports needs a Goods Movement Reference created in GVMS before the vehicle can board. That is a separate step from the declaration.
What “cheap” usually costs later
A low declaration fee is not a saving if the declaration is wrong. The expensive failures in UK customs are almost never the clearance fee:
- An incorrect commodity code can mean years of underpaid or overpaid duty. HMRC can assess underpayments across a four-year window.
- A missed preference claim means paying full duty on goods that qualified for zero.
- A wrong customs value — omitting assists, royalties or freight terms — distorts every downstream figure.
- Delays at the border trigger demurrage at £50–£200 per day, which dwarfs any difference in clearance fee within about a week.
If you have overpaid, you can reclaim it from HMRC using form C285, normally within three years of the customs debt arising. But recovering money is slower and more expensive than declaring it correctly the first time.
How to compare quotes properly
Ask every broker the same five questions:
- Per declaration or per commodity line? And how many lines are included?
- What is not in this price? Specifically: GMR creation, special procedures, licence handling, out-of-hours work, amendments.
- Who is liable if the declaration is wrong? Are you being asked to act under direct or indirect representation, and do you understand what that means for your liability?
- What records will I receive, and in what format? You must keep import records for four years — if your broker cannot hand you clean evidence per MRN, that obligation lands on you anyway.
- What happens if HMRC queries an entry? Is post-clearance support included, or billed?
The fifth question separates a clearance vendor from a customs partner. Most of the cost of getting customs wrong appears months later, in an HMRC compliance check.
What HC Customs charges
Our declarations start from £20 — per declaration, not per commodity line.
That second half matters more than the number. Go back to the trap above: a five-line entry priced per line at £50 costs £250. The same entry with us is one declaration, priced as one declaration, whether it carries one commodity line or twenty.
Price rises from there with genuine complexity — special procedures, licensable goods, urgent or out-of-hours clearance, unusually large multi-line consignments — and one-off shipments cost more than regular volume, because a recurring client is already set up in our systems while a single import is a fresh onboarding every time.
What we will not do is quote you a low headline rate and recover it on line count.
Compliance monitoring is a separate product. Filing a declaration and proving it was right two years later are different problems. Our compliance portal handles the second: it reconciles your CDS declarations against your own records, builds audit-defence evidence per MRN, and flags duty you have overpaid so you can reclaim it.
| Plan | Price | Declarations included |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | £395/month | 200 per month |
| Premium | £795/month | up to 500 per month |
| Enterprise | £2,000/month | custom limits, multi-entity |
Every plan starts with a 30-day free trial — full Standard access, no card required.
You do not need both. Plenty of clients use us purely for clearance, and others use the portal while another broker files their entries. But the combination is where the money usually is: the declaration fee is the small number on this page, and the four-year HMRC assessment window is the large one.
Send us a typical shipment profile and we will quote against it rather than against a generic rate card — number of commodity lines, whether a special procedure applies, and your monthly volume are what actually determine the price.
Frequently asked questions
Is customs clearance the same as duty and VAT?
No. Customs clearance is the service of preparing and submitting your declaration to HMRC. Duty and import VAT are statutory charges assessed on the goods themselves, based on commodity code, customs value and origin. Your broker collects or defers them, but does not set them.
Do I have to pay for clearance on exports too?
Yes. Export declarations are a separate submission and are normally charged separately, though often at a lower rate than imports because there is no duty or VAT calculation involved.
Can I do my own customs declarations and avoid the fee?
Yes. Any UK business with an EORI number can register for the Customs Declaration Service and submit its own declarations. Most importers use a broker because a CDS declaration carries a large number of data elements with strict conditional rules, and errors cause delays, penalties and overpaid duty rather than simply bouncing back for correction.
Why did my clearance cost more than the quote?
The usual causes are per-line charging on a multi-line entry, a special procedure that was not in the original scope, amendments after submission, or out-of-hours handling. Ask for the breakdown — a reputable broker will give you one.
Does postponed VAT accounting reduce my clearance cost?
It does not reduce the clearance fee, but it significantly improves cash flow: instead of paying import VAT at the border and reclaiming it later, you account for it on your VAT return. It is available to any UK VAT-registered importer.